Fear of the Lonely
by CreepMatter
Summary: Travis Bickle has been falling back into a cycle of loneliness and depression since the media died down on his rescuing of a young girl but it appears that's not the only thing haunting Travis. The monsterish force that once terrorized the small town of Maine, Derry has found its way into the chaotic streets of NYC and into the mind of Travis himself.


[I intend this to be a multi chapter story]

The Devil is Home - Chapter 1

New York has taken its umpteenth shower in a month. The filthy, impure air is momentarily cleansed by the rain. Travis Bickle, a NYC cabby, thinks to himself how long will the freshness last? "Not long" his inner mind replies as if already knowing the answer and only asking to stimulate conversation.

"You say something Bick?" asks Wizard, Travis' colleague and close friend, well as close as someone like Travis can get to another person.

"Na, just murmuring, thinking out" replies Travis in a slightly startled voice.

"Ah, good ole Travis. Where you been hacking today? Uptown? Main Street?" Wizard asks if trying to sprout discussion between the pair

"Just all over the shop, the normal thing" Travis replies in disinterest.

"It's been slow, real slow" he adds

"Well, summer is out. People want to walk, probably because of all those government health ads on the TV" Wizard jokes with a grin cracking out of his teeth

"What, that one with the broad on the escalator?" Charlie T chimes in, interested and smirking. Another workmate of Travis.

Wizard and Charlie T get a talking, poking at each other and laughing "Oh, how I would love to get with that fine young-"I'm going to get a walking on" Travis farewells his colleagues that are too into male shenanigans and fantasies to give a flying fuck whether Travis dropped dead at that specific moment.

Wizard yells out on a whim "see ya, trav" and the two continue their chatter.

Travis enters his taxi and drives off.

Driving down a busy street, he stops in traffic. Travis takes a breath, inhaling the city air while he still can. He's glancing around at the walkways, usually the paths are bustling with hookers leaning on walls, dealers pacing and pimps boasting their bling and bitches. The rain will do that to anyone, the emptiness fills Travis with some power.

"Maybe a real rain will wash this scum off the streets for good, am I right?" Travis asks aloud, empowered.

He's talking to himself again, trying to make conversation with someone who's not there. Travis tired from work, stuck in traffic, opens the glove department. A few pens, cigarette and a lighter. Something lays underneath the lighter, Travis swipes the item out from in between the lighter and the leather ground of the glove department.

It's a photo, something Travis keeps to remedy the pain in his heart and the loneliness in his life. A beautiful, young woman stares back at Travis with a glowing smile that would make the coldest of souls tremble, this image is like a heavenly ray over Travis as it brings him to the thickest of smile. It's BETSY, the one who got away, the literal ONE in his life. The only person he's ever connected with. He feels a dozen emotions on the positive side - happiness, joy, faith, hope, optimism, confidence. Every good feeling ever known to man Travis is experiencing right now, almost like Betsy is right there beside him. Blessing Travis with her glorious scent and starry eyes, a presence of divinity and purity and one of mortality and guilt are in the same room.

Travis wonders deeply into the photograph as if it were some undiscovered paradise hidden in the depths of the Pacific Ocean. He analyses every spec of it, every hair string, every eye lash, every imperfection or rather perfection on her face. He finally just sits back and gazes, the only true form of rest Travis can obtain in his hopeless journey.

There's a thin red lining on the top right of the photograph, Travis notices it and seems confused as he didn't see the smudge in his prior inspection.

"Must have missed it" he thinks to himself and continues on with an almost euphoric leer.

"Betsy, how are you? Do you miss me? Because I miss you a ton" Travis says to the photograph, an inanimate object.

"So how's work at the Palantine office? Oh yeah, that's right. You're out of the election race, guessing now in a fancy corporate building, hey? Betsy?" questioning, Travis appears like a madman. At this moment, he seems to snap out of the dreamy state and back into reality.

Still with photograph in hand, traffic still jammed, walkways still empty, life still empty. Travis glances back at the photo and the red lining has appeared to have spread into a circular redness on the edge. Travis shoves the picture forward, right up in his own face, wondering where in bloody hell this came from. Open mouthed, tunnel visioned. Travis slowly peels back the edge of the photo from the sticky frame to reveal

continuance smudging and blurring on the blank side and peels more to unveil a sight so hideous and grotesque that... the Angel that was admiring Travis moments ago is gone. All that spies on this tortured soul is a demon with a chipped tooth, black eyes, facial scratch marks and a dirty grin that would make the coldest souls cry in disgust and fear. The red liquid is still moving on its own and fills up the background of the portrait ever so perfectly, not even a nick of red touches the demon.

Travis starts to shake as if he has category 5 tremor and drops the photo, the redness stains on his fingers. He examines closer, this is not just your ordinary shop paint or food colouring. It's freshly extracted blood, human or not Travis doesn't know. A million thoughts are racing into his mind, Travis starts to panic.

"Who's fucking joke is this!?" Travis yells to no answer

Tossing and turning, Travis' perspective accidentally whips past the surely demonized photo laying on the ground. He spots a wink from the old hag in the photo, Travis gasps.

"WHAT IN CHRIST'S NAME?" Travis screams in horror.

BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG on the cab's window, Travis turns like a flick to the window.

A man appears "Can you move it along buddy? I want to get home to my family before dinner gets cold"

Travis obviously shaken and rattled, composes himself.

"Ahhhh, sure thing sir. Sorry about that"

The man walks off with a shrug. The traffic has moved a long way during Travis' disturbing ordeal, he drives off. It's a very clear road ahead.

After what in Travis' mind is the longest ride home ever, he parks in front of the apartment complex where he lives and with no hesitation, goes scouring the dusty floor of the taxi for that palm sized nightmare. He looks far and wide, up and down but can't find it at all.

"It's gone, where is it?" Travis asks

He looks in the backseats, on the dashboard, under the pedal, in the glove department again. He looks further. There is nothing, nothing at all. Travis rotates 180, circling his head, monitoring the whole interior in utter disbelief.

"It was just here, dammit" Travis exclaims

A 12 hour taxi shift and the nightmarish ordeal afterward has left Travis with no energy whatsoever, he gives up searching for the photograph and decides to just head up to his apartment for some well-needed rest.

Just as Travis is about to enter the complex, a loud assortment of bangs and clangs is heard.

"You motherfucking bum, I'll teach you how to shank" a voice in the distance yells

"Slice this waste of life, tommy" another voice shouts

Travis lurks forward with hesitation, he finds out the voices are coming from an alleyway across from his complex. Travis hides behind a mailbox to survey the commotion.

There are two men standing with broken glasses in hand and hostile intentions and a collapsed hobo quite literally begging for his life.

The hobo pleads in a raspy, feeble voice to one of the young men "Please boy, I didn't try to hurt ya. There was this... THING! I don't what it was, it came out the dark there"

"I'm sure it was something from the darkness that cut me, just like Freddy Kruger cut me in my dreams last night. You stupid mutt!" One offender mockingly digs at the helpless old man

"Enough talking, waste this fucker" The other thug hurries as if taking life is just a box to be ticked off on the everyday to-do list.

Travis is looking on, he's disgusted by the act but doesn't want to get involved. He can't call the cops, they won't get here fast enough. It's a terrible situation but one that is ever so common in New York. Travis can only spectate, "I already had some old witch move on a piece of paper, I don't want to get stabbed with a glass bottle right beside where I live as well" Travis thinks to himself

Even with all this violence, Travis notices something strange about the situation in front of him. It's nothing to the eye of the norm but someone with the mechanics of Travis Bickle, it's quite weird. The alleyway is completely devoid of vibrancy; black, whites and greys fill the scene with a lightbulb illuminating the ground level and only pure darkness further back. A balloon so deep in redness that you would think it's out of your daily Bugs Bunny episode, it's hanging on a strand by a garbage bin. Right next to the two thugs and one hobo. Everything so desaturated and the balloon sticking out like a sore thumb.

Travis attention is diverted away from the altercation until the hobo falls flat on his back with a stream of blood flowing down his neck. One of the men stabbed him with the glass bottle, the hobo struggles onto dear life by waving his arms into the air frantically but it's to no avail. The hobo becomes still and dead.

The two men laugh and kick the body of the dead hobo a few times before heading off.

Travis, eyes wide open, moves closer to the alleyway but then has his reservations.

"What if go there and someone thinks I did it, I killed the poor guy and calls the cops?" Travis ponders to himself.

He shakes it off, it's a sad occurrence but ever so common and it's better to be a living bystander than a Good Samaritan who's about to be killed or locked up. Travis just leaves to his home and the body is left to rot.

One would think that's what is suppose to happen but something appears out of the backend darkness of the alleyway. It appears slowly inch by inch. Travis is long gone, no one is witness to this otherworldly happening. The light gives view to an arm tattered with white puffs, red dots and a giant white hand. It grabs the corpse, racking his frame along the ground for a hissing noise and the blood trails by. Into the darkness, the body goes. The hand quickly snatches the balloon as if the burger is the body and the balloon is the drink. One wonders what could possess a limb so large, was this human or not? A hysterical laugh is heard and footsteps echo from a nearby sewer drain. IT's gone.


End file.
